A press conference, sponsored by the Orange RAPP (Residents Against Pilgrim Pipelines), was held on November 27 at the foot of a large coal ash landfill near the Danskammer Point Generating Station in the Town of Newburgh.

The organization wants to bring attention to the hazards posed to the air, water and soil by this landfill and affirm their opposition to the re-powering of the Danskammer power plant that is slated to switch from coal to natural gas.

Sandra Kissam said her organization is concerned, “because a company called Danskammer LLC wants to reopen the plant and operate it 24/7. Fossil fuels are something that we oppose and that’s why we’re here.”

Kissam said coal ash waste has been stored at the site beginning in the 1950s. She said her group has been in touch with the Division of Environmental Remediation and the Division of Materials Management concerning this site. She said Danskammer LLC has hired Synapse Risk Management to monitor 18 wells at the waste site to check for groundwater contamination but a complete evaluation should include monitoring the air and the land surfaces in the immediate area and not just what is in the wells.

She is concerned about the levels of lead, mercury and arsenic coming off of this site.

“In fact the ideal thing would be to have this material moved to some other location unfortunately across the country now there are over 1,000, if not more, landfills like this because coal was the fuel of choice and so we have coal ash throughout the entire United States,” she said.

Frank Muthig, who has lived near the plant for years, recalled that in the early days the plant was owned by Central Hudson and they got rid of their coal ash through the use of a water piping system. The company completely filled in a large pond with ash and an open “canal” allowed some of the waste to run out into the Hudson River when there were no regulations in place. He said the present large ash hill is like a protected landfill that contains, “probably tens of thousands of tons of coal that was just disposed of at the site.”

Muthig said early on Central Hudson was “grandfathered in” and was not subject to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of 1970 and 1972, which allowed the plant to operate in excess of pollution limits. He pointed out that the new owner will have to comply with today’s regulations. Muthig said many former Central Hudson employees who worked in this area have experienced health problems.

“They didn’t enjoy their retirement wound up with respiratory problems and issues,” he said. Wayne Koutcher said the gas that Danskammer is proposing to use, “is not your grandfather’s gas; it has tons of chemical in them, some may even be nuclear . . . We need trees not these types of plants. We have a lot of work to do, but let’s do it for the future children. Coal miners years ago if they made it to 50 they were doing real good, we can do a lot better than this and there’s no reason not to.”

Former Town of Woodbury Supervisor Shelia Conroy said she became more knowledgeable about coal ash after seeing these types of landfills collapse and wash away during the hurricanes in the Carolinas. She then began to learn about the effects of ash getting into the water supply.

“They don’t know how to clean it up; they don’t know what to do with it,” she said. “I became concerned that we should head off future problems and deal with this now and not wait until it becomes a crisis. This needs to be addressed before the plant reopens, before anything is done with the plant. We can’t just let this sit here; it needs to be addressed, it needs to be remediation and that needs to be at the top of the list before this plant goes any further.”

Sierra Club member Jurgen Wekerle said simply by personal observation one can see that the landfill site slopes down toward river, “and whatever rain that falls or storm takes place, super-storm Sandy in 2012 that inundated the bottom of the Danskammer power plant; all that water runs directly off into the Hudson River.”

Wekerle said directly underneath this entire area lies the New York City/Delaware Aqueduct, one of two that supplies the city.

“It is being rebuilt right now from here over to Chelsea and in the river itself is the Chelsea Tap, an emergency supply for New York City in case there is a shortfall in the Catskill Mountains,” he said, adding that the threat to the local and regional water system is significant.

The Environmental Director of Clearwater Manna Jo Greene said the mission of her organization, “is to protect the Hudson River and the well-being of everyone living in its watershed. We believe re-building a 24/7 year round fracked gas fired, base load plant is a $400 million folly. It’s a poor investment on the part of the investors and ultimately, it’s going to be the rate payers who pay for that. We want the investors who think this is a viable idea to rethink this and be part of the transition to a renewable energy economy. It really is not a wise investment of anybody’s resources.”

Manna Jo Greene said investors who may be thinking of backing a re-tooling of Danskammer or of establishing smaller “peaker” power plants should not be seeking a niche in the marketplace for this old technology but should commit to finding ways to generate clean electricity.

Danskammer Energy is holding two Open House public meetings on their proposal to re-power their plant: Monday, December 17 at the Middle Hope Elementary School, 62 Overlook Dr in Newburgh from 11-1 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and on Tuesday, December 18 at the VFW Post 5913 Community Center, 8 School St. in Wappingers Falls, also with two sessions from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.